Brooklyn Rider & Ariadne Greif (soprano)

Celebrating two decades together, this is Brooklyn Rider’s homage to their namesake, “Der Blaue Reiter,” a pioneering pre-WWI artistic collective that counted among its members Arnold Schoenberg and Wassily Kandinsky. Colin Jacobsen’s song cycle, Chalk and Soot, built upon Kandinsky’s Dada-inspired text, is paired with Schoenberg’s daring Second String Quartet, both featuring the mesmerizing American singer, Ariadne Greif. And in a second installment of 2014’s highly celebrated Brooklyn Rider Almanac, four newly commissioned works complete the experience: Clarice Assad, Gabriel Kahane, Giovanni Solima and Tyshawn Sorey.

With their gripping performance style and unquenchable appetite for musical adventure, Brooklyn Rider has carved a singular space in the world of string quartets over their fifteen-year history. Defining the string quartet as a medium with deep historic roots and endless possibility for invention, they find equal inspiration in musical languages ranging from late Beethoven to Persian classical music to American roots music to the endlessly varied voices of living composers.